Newtown 911 dispatcher urged callers to take cover

HARTFORD, Conn. — As gunfire boomed over and over in the background, a janitor begged a 911 dispatcher to send help, saying, “There’s still shooting going on, please!” A woman breathlessly reported seeing a gunman run down a hall. And a teacher said she was holed up in her classroom with her children but hadn’t yet locked the door.

Recordings of 911 calls from last year’s Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting were released Wednesday, and they not only paint a picture of anguish and tension inside the building, they also show town dispatchers mobilizing help, reassuring callers and urging them to take cover.

Additional Photos

A bus drives past a sign reading Welcome to Sandy Hook, Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2013, in Newtown, Conn. The 911 calls from the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings released Wednesday show town dispatchers urged panicked callers to take cover, mobilized help and asked about the welfare of the children as the boom of gunfire could be heard at times in the background. The recordings are released under court order after a legal challenge from The Associated Press. AP Photo/Jessica Hill

In this photo provided by the Newtown Bee, Connecticut State Police lead a line of children from the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. on Friday, Dec. 14, 2012 after a shooting at the school. Recordings of 911 calls from the Newtown school shooting are being released Wednesday Dec. 4, 2013, days after a state prosecutor dropped his fight to continue withholding them despite an order to provide them to The Associated Press. AP Photo/Newtown Bee, Shannon Hicks, File

The calls were made public under a court order after a lengthy effort by The Associated Press to have them released for review. Prosecutors had argued that making the recordings public would only cause more anguish for the victims’ families.

The gunman, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, shot his way through a plate-glass window at the front of the school on Dec. 14. The office staff saw the shooter, who was wearing a hat and sunglasses, as he entered the building with a rifle and began shooting down a hallway.

One of the first callers to Newtown police was a woman who said in a trembling, breathless voice: “I caught a glimpse of somebody. They’re running down the hallway. Oh, they’re still running and still shooting. Sandy Hook school, please.”

Another woman, who was shot in the foot, calmly reported that she was in a classroom with children and two other adults, but that there was no way to safely lock the door. The dispatcher told her to apply pressure to the wound.

“OK, are you OK right now?” the dispatcher asked.

The woman answered: “For now, hopefully.”

Another call came from a custodian, Rick Thorne, who said that a window at the front of the school was shattered and that he kept hearing shooting.

While on the line with Thorne, the dispatcher told somebody else: “Get everyone you can going down there.”

Thorne remained on the phone for several minutes.

“There’s still shooting going on, please!” the custodian pleaded to a 911 dispatcher as six or seven shots could be heard in the background. “Still, it’s still going on!”

Within 11 minutes of entering the school, Lanza had fatally shot 20 children and six educators with a semi-automatic rifle. Lanza also killed his mother in their Newtown home before driving to the school. He committed suicide as police closed in.

Newtown police officers arrived at the school within four minutes of the first 911 call, but nearly six more minutes passed before they entered the building as they sorted out concerns over a possible second shooter, according to a prosecutor’s report issued last week.

It’s not clear whether the delay made a difference because Lanza killed himself one minute after the first officer arrived on the scene, according to the report.

In one of the recordings released Wednesday, dispatchers were heard making three calls to Connecticut state police that apparently rang unanswered. One of those calls rang for at least 50 seconds. State police picked up on a fourth call.

But state police had already been dispatched to the school by the time those calls were made, according to a timeline and call log supplied by Newtown officials.

In all, seven recordings of landline calls from inside the school to Newtown police were posted Wednesday. Calls that were routed to state police are the subject of a separate, pending freedom of information request by the AP.

“We all understand why some people have strong feelings about the release of these tapes. This was a horrible crime,” said Kathleen Carroll, AP executive editor and senior vice president. “It’s important to remember, though, that 911 tapes, like other police documents, are public records. Reviewing them is a part of normal newsgathering in a responsible news organization.”

Teresa Rousseau, whose daughter Lauren was among the six educators killed, said she hadn’t listened to the tapes: “The way we keep our sanity is to start ignoring this stuff.”

Rousseau, an editor at the Danbury News-Times, said there was no need to play the tapes on the radio or television.

“I think there’s a big difference between secrecy and privacy,” Rousseau said. “We have these laws so government isn’t secret, not so we’re invading victims’ privacy.”

On the day of the shooting, the AP requested 911 calls and police reports, as it and other news organizations routinely do in their newsgathering.

The prosecutor in charge of the Newtown investigation, State’s Attorney Stephen Sedensky III, argued that releasing the tapes could cause pain for the victims’ families, hurt the investigation, subject witnesses to harassment and violate the rights of survivors who deserve special protection as victims of child abuse.

A state judge dismissed those arguments last week.

“Release of the audio recordings will also allow the public to consider and weigh what improvements, if any, should be made to law enforcement’s response to such incidents,” Superior Court Judge Eliot Prescott said.

“Delaying the release of the audio recordings, particularly where the legal justification to keep them confidential is lacking, only serves to fuel speculation about and undermine confidence in our law enforcement officials.”

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